Mentoring and Transition to Advanced Practice Role
What Is Mentoring
Mentoring in nursing has been defined as a non-evaluated experience that empowers the mentor and mentee to develop personally and professionally within the auspices of a caring, collaborative, and respectful environment (Rosser, Rice, Campbell, & Jack, 2004). Mentoring can be a source of support in the transition of practice from a registered nurse (RN) role to an advanced practice nurse (APN) role ( Poronsky , 2013, Rauckhorst , 2005).
Transition and Nursing Education
Transition to the APN role evolves over time, beginning with rigorous graduate-level academic preparation that includes acquisition of new knowledge and skills, and leading to major changes in function and scope of practice. For experienced RNs, this transition includes a change in role from that of a competent and expert RN to a novice APN. The changes and upheavals inherent with transition can bring about a wide array of feelings. including disorientation, distress, and anxiety, as well as elation and happiness.
Mentoring can be a source of support for guiding, nurturing, and facilitating novice APNs with balancing their transition into advanced practice. Mentoring has been identified as a way to assist newcomers into and advance in the profession of nursing (American Academy of Nurse Practitioners , 2006 ). However, there is no one universal model of mentoring. The mentoring relationship may be a one-to-one dyad with an individual mentor, or a group-mentoring relationship. The setting can be in person, face to-face, or virtual in cyberspace.
The mentoring relationship can be informally established and initiated voluntarily between the mentor and mentee it can also be formally established, initiated within an institution or academic setting by an administrator or senior manager (Harrington, 2011; Vance, 2002). In an informal mentoring model, a voluntary one-to-one relationship is created between two people based on a spoken or unspoken commitment to the relationship and to each other. Formal mentoring takes place in a structured program in which the mentor and protégé are assigned to one another, typically for a specified amount of time.
The mentoring relationship, whether it is informal or formal in structure, unfolds as an apprenticeship, competency, or reflective prototype (Oliver & Aggleton , 2002). In the apprenticeship model, the mentor offers guided supervision to the mentee. In the competency model, the mentor acts as a coach who monitors and evaluates practice of a defined set of behaviors or competencies. In the reflective model, the mentor guides the mentee to develop professional identity.
Impact of Advance Transition In Nursing Education
APN students and novice APNs may experience anxiety, conflict, loss of confidence in clinical skills, and feelings of incompetence when making their transition into practice ( Brykczynski , 2009). Although transition is part of life, the capacity to balance transition is dependent on multiple factors including the nature of the transition itself and the surrounding environment, an individual's personality, and available resources and supports (Goodman, Schlossberg, & Anderson, 2006). One resource for balancing the stress of transition can be mentoring.
Harrington (2011) found that a mentoring relationship could positively affect new nursing practitioners in four areas of practice: quality of care, productivity, job satisfaction, and longevity in practice.Successful mentoring relationships require advance preparation for both the mentor and the mentee Mentoring programs that prepare the mentor and mentee to understand the nature of the relationship, set realistic expectations and goals, and monitor the progress of the relationship between compatible mentors and mentees can improve professionalism growth, productivity, and competence (Barker, 2006).
Recommendations for academic and health care institutions include creating a mentoring culture and establishing formal mentoring programs that include training for mentors. There is a need for new APNs to smoothly transition into practice. Nurse practitioners play a key role in providing care and have demonstrated their ability to increase access to cost-effective, comprehensive, and high-quality care (American College of Nurse Practitioners, 2009).
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